Snow In London: Travel Disruption, Warm Banks, And Frolicking Foxes

By Londonist Last edited 16 months ago

Last Updated 13 December 2022

Snow In London: Travel Disruption, Warm Banks, And Frolicking Foxes
The open doors of a tube train on a snowy platform
There are severe delays on various tube services. Image: iStock/kev303

Unless you live in a windowless house, you'll probably have noticed it's been snowing in London — that icy double-edged sword which makes everything look dreamy, while causing general havoc with your plans, and possibly leaving you with an excitable child or two in the house on a work day.

Travel disruption

As you'd expect, not everything is hunky dory in the world of transport today. There are severe delays on many tube and Overground lines "due to track faults caused by heavy snow and ice." Some bus routes are affected too (check out TfL's live bus arrival times), as are various mainline trains, including the Gatwick Express, Thameslink and Southern services — expected to be disrupted until 3pm this afternoon.

Social media's been awash with reports of ungritted sections of road on the M25, with crashes, and motorists stuck in their cars for a number of hours. The latest update is that the section between junctions 23 and 25 has now reopened — but it goes without saying that you shouldn't be driving out there today unless utterly necessary.

Flights at London's airports are being affected too, with various delays and cancellations, due to unsafe conditions. Check with the airport/airline to see what's what.

As far as we know, most of London's major museums, galleries and shops remain open.

Free bike hire

If you're desperate to get out and about, you could do

Snow fun!

Of course, snow in the capital means a flurry of gorgeous pics and vids of the city blanketed in white. Here's a small snowy selection:

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A post shared by Franck (@franckcharles_)

And here's a video of London's resident bushy-tails frolicking about. Play it while listening to this dainty Belle and Sebastian track:

Warm banks

A steaming cup of tea
Image: iStock/Alina Rosanova

The icy weather is certainly not good news for the many people unable to deal with spiralling energy bills. Help is at hand in many of London's boroughs, though, where warm banks have been set up — read our guide.

Vintage pics of London in the snow

vintage cars in a snowy trafalgar square
Trafalgar Square, 1947. Alamy / PA/PA Archive/PA Images

Why not make yourself a hot chocolate and peruse these vintage snaps of London in wintry conditions, featuring snowball fights in Trafalgar Square, and an elephant helping to shovel snow at London Zoo.

Snow bingo!

We created this a few years ago, but this game of snow bingo is as evergreen as a pine tree:

Daily Express SNOW Headlines of DOOM

SNOW BOMB CHAOS

Lately we've been tracking the Express's ceaseless prophecies of snowmageddon. Their journalists (do we call them that?) will be cock-a-hoop that it's actually gone and ruddy snowed today — although would you classify this as a SNOW BOMB, BLITZ, BATTERING... or a MILDY DISRUPTIVE SCATTERING OF LIGHT SNOW?

The coldest it's ever been in London?

It sure is chilly out, but it's not the coldest London's ever been. We wrote an article about that a while ago.

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